ISLAMABAD: The government apparently succumbed to the protest of Utility Stores Corporation (USC) employees as Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Political Affairs Naeemul Haq on Tuesday announced that all demands of the protesters had been accepted.

Led by Arif Hussain Shah, CBA union chairman, a large number of the USC employees spent the night on the road at D-Chowk while many women participants, who had returned to their homes on Monday evening, came back early on Tuesday.

The statement by the PM’s special assistant came in the afternoon as the employees showed no sign of vacating the spot or abandoning their sit-in.

Mr Haq said the demands of the USC union were acceptable and justified. However, he said some elements in the PML-N and PPP were trying to provoke the protesters because these two parties had committed corruption during their tenures.

He said the auditor general’s reports had highlighted enormous corrupt practices in the USC during the tenures of the two parties. He claimed that certain elements in the two parties wanted to create chaos to protect their corruption.

“I urge the employees not to get deceived by elements of these political parties.” He said the government would protect the rights of employees to the maximum level.

But the USC employees continued their protest in the federal capital for the second day, blocking Jinnah Avenue at D-Chowk.

The main demand of the union is regularisation of 7,000 contractual and daily-wage employees of the USC across the country.

The other demand is release of Rs27 billion to the USC pending in terms of subsidy that the government had to pay for the last seven years, which was creating a financial crunch for the corporation.

Despite the announcement by Mr Haq, the protesters had not left D-Chowk and were demanding issuance of a notification.

Meanwhile, Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, spokesperson for PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said Imran Khan’s tsunami was in operation and had started throwing people out of their jobs.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2018

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